Time for a haircut…

Susie told me this morning I needed a haircut.   That’s pretty rich, considering I don’t have much hair, but hey, it’s a good excuse for a motorcycle ride.   Not that I need an excuse to get out on the bike…it’s Saturday, it’s a beautiful day, and going to the barber shop is as good a reason as any to fire up the Baja Blaster.

Maybe next time I'll get a Mohawk...

I have mixed emotions about getting a haircut.   I actually like visiting the barber shop, but I still am a little nervous around barbers (more on this in a minute or two).    The barber shop I went to today had a couple of really cool old chairs.    I like old stuff, and these two chairs in particular were kind of neat…

Two antique barber chairs...I was in the one on the left earlier today

Like I said, I like barber shops.   I like the talcum powder smell, I like the happy vibes that seem to permeate any barber shop, and I like the fact that I don’t have to go too often.   For starters, as explained already, I don’t have too much hair.   And then there’s the trick I learned from my Dad about cutting grass 50 years ago.

Dad was always fooling around with machinery and cool stuff, and one day he came home with this lawn mower that looked like it was designed to cut down forests.   It was called the Big Snapper (don’t laugh…that was its real name) and it was a delightfully crude piece of gear.   It had a big 8-horsepower Wisconsin engine and a big flat hunk of diamond plate that doubled as its frame.   We grew up in a very rural part of New Jersey (it’s not all like Hoboken back there), we lived on a couple of acres, and the Big Snapper was perfect for what we had to do.

Dad on the Big Snapper back in the 1950s...

Before you start thinking we came from money, let me stop you right there.   Having a couple of acres in the sticks back in those days was not a sign of wealth…it was a sign of not being able to afford living closer to the city.   What it meant to me was that I had to mow two acres of weeds in the summer, and that riding mower looked mighty good from that perspective.

Dad figured out pretty quickly that the blade height on the Big Snapper was adjustable, and once he learned that, he adjusted it to give the grass a Marine Corps haircut.   The blade was as low as it could go.   “Won’t have to cut the grass as often,” Dad said.    As the guy who did most of the cutting (and as a guy who loved anything with a motor), it sounded good to me.

So back to this business of being afraid of barbers…

When I was a little kid, we had a “country” everything.   Country store, country barber, and a country doctor.   When I was about 5, my Mom took me to get at haircut at Charley the Barber’s (our country barber), and I was propped up in the little kid’s chair while Charley worked on me.   It was a cool barber shop built into one of the rooms in Charley’s house (in those days when you lived out in the sticks, lots of businesses were built into peoples’ homes).

Charley was one of these barbers who used a scissors more than a clipper, and those scissors were in constant motion.  He kept  the things snipping even when he wasn’t actually cutting my hair, and in fact, I’m guessing that maybe one snip in 10 actually went towards cutting hair.   Watching Charley keeping those blades dancing around my head always made me nervous, but what happened next really put me in orbit.

Milburn Stone, aka Doc Bristol

As I mentioned, we had a country everything.   While Charlie (our country barber) was snipping away on my little head, our country doctor popped in for a haircut.  That would be Doc Bristol.   He looked exactly like Milburn Stone, and if you don’t know who that is…well, he was the doctor in the old Gunsmoke series.  (If you’re not old enough to remember Gunsmoke, I can’t help you.)

“Hey, I see you got little Berky in the chair,” said Doc Bristol.  “Cut one of his ears off…I need the business!”

Whoa!   That was all it took.  I mean, I was 5 years old and I didn’t quite get sarcasm yet.  I went nuts.  So much so that my Mom had to take me home.  With half a haircut (but fortunately, I remember thinking, both my ears).

I would not go back to Charley’s.   Ever.    To make a long story short, my Dad (who loved gadgets anyway) bought a hair trimmer that day.  And yes, my old man cut my hair from that day forward.   All the way up to the time I went in the Army.  I still get a little nervous around barbers, but Dad’s been gone for 30 years now and you do what you gotta do.

Lupe, my Spanish tutor...

Anyway, after several decades I got to a place in my life where I can walk into a barber shop without my blood pressure going up.

I actually enjoy the experience now, and in particular, I enjoyed the barber shop I visited today.   I still go for cheap haircuts and I always have them use the No. 1 clipper (remember the lawn mower story; it’s the shortest one they have).   I refuse to pay big bucks for a haircut, and if I’m the only guy speaking English in the shop, that’s even better.  I’m trying to learn Spanish and visiting the barber shops gives me a chance to learn a bit more.  I was actually able to follow some of the conversation in there today.   I’m doing the Rosetta Stone thing with Spanish and Lupe is helping me a bit.  It’s cool.

There were two moments of truth at the end of my visit today.

One was when the barber handed me the mirror and asked if I liked the haircut.   Hey, it’s a lawn mower special with the blade as low as it will go!   You bet.  I love it.

The other moment of truth was when I walked over to the register.  The sign said haircuts were $11, but the senior cut was $8.   Maybe my barber wouldn’t think I was a geezer.

“That will be $8, please…”